Rails will set you up with what seems like a huge amount of stuff for such a tiny command! You’ve got the entire Rails directory structure now with all the code you need to run our simple application right out of the box.

1.2 rails server

The rails server command launches a small web server named WEBrick which comes bundled with Ruby. You’ll use this any time you want to access your application through a web browser.

WEBrick isn’t your only option for serving Rails. We’ll get to that later.

The controller generator is expecting parameters in the form of generate controller ControllerName action1 action2. Let’s make a Greetings controller with an action of hello, which will say something nice to us.

What all did this generate? It made sure a bunch of directories were in our application, and created a controller file, a view file, a functional test file, a helper for the view, a javascript file and a stylesheet file.

Check out the controller and modify it a little (in app/controllers/greetings_controller.rb):

class GreetingsController < ApplicationController
def hello
@message = "Hello, how are you today?"
end
end

Then the view, to display our message (in app/views/greetings/hello.html.erb):

<h1>A Greeting for You!</h1>
<p><%= @message %></p>

Fire up your server using rails server.

$ rails server
=> Booting WEBrick...

Make sure that you do not have any “tilde backup” files in app/views/(controller), or else WEBrick will not show the expected output. This seems to be a bug in Rails 2.3.0.

With a normal, plain-old Rails application, your URLs will generally follow the pattern of http://(host)/(controller)/(action), and a URL like http://(host)/(controller) will hit the index action of that controller.

For a list of available field types, refer to the API documentation for the column method for the TableDefinition class.

But instead of generating a model directly (which we’ll be doing later), let’s set up a scaffold. A scaffold in Rails is a full set of model, database migration for that model, controller to manipulate it, views to view and manipulate the data, and a test suite for each of the above.

We will set up a simple resource called “HighScore” that will keep track of our highest score on video games we play.

The generator checks that there exist the directories for models, controllers, helpers, layouts, functional and unit tests, stylesheets, creates the views, controller, model and database migration for HighScore (creating the high_scores table and fields), takes care of the route for the resource, and new tests for everything.

The migration requires that we migrate, that is, run some Ruby code (living in that 20100209025147_create_high_scores.rb) to modify the schema of our database. Which database? The sqlite3 database that Rails will create for you when we run the rake db:migrate command. We’ll talk more about Rake in-depth in a little while.

Let’s talk about unit tests. Unit tests are code that tests and makes assertions about code. In unit testing, we take a little part of code, say a method of a model, and test its inputs and outputs. Unit tests are your friend. The sooner you make peace with the fact that your quality of life will drastically increase when you unit test your code, the better. Seriously. We’ll make one in a moment.

1.4 rails console

The console command lets you interact with your Rails application from the command line. On the underside, rails console uses IRB, so if you’ve ever used it, you’ll be right at home. This is useful for testing out quick ideas with code and changing data server-side without touching the website.

You can also use the alias “c” to invoke the console: rails c.

If you wish to test out some code without changing any data, you can do that by invoking rails console --sandbox.

$ rails console --sandbox
Loading development environment in sandbox (Rails 3.1.0)
Any modifications you make will be rolled back on exit
irb(main):001:0>

1.5 rails dbconsole

rails dbconsole figures out which database you’re using and drops you into whichever command line interface you would use with it (and figures out the command line parameters to give to it, too!). It supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite and SQLite3.

You can also use the alias “db” to invoke the dbconsole: rails db.

1.6 rails plugin

The rails plugin command simplifies plugin management. Plugins can be installed by name or their repository URLs. You need to have Git installed if you want to install a plugin from a Git repo. The same holds for Subversion too.

2 Rake

Rake is Ruby Make, a standalone Ruby utility that replaces the Unix utility ‘make’, and uses a ‘Rakefile’ and .rake files to build up a list of tasks. In Rails, Rake is used for common administration tasks, especially sophisticated ones that build off of each other.

You can get a list of Rake tasks available to you, which will often depend on your current directory, by typing rake --tasks. Each task has a description, and should help you find the thing you need.

2.1 about

rake about gives information about version numbers for Ruby, RubyGems, Rails, the Rails subcomponents, your application’s folder, the current Rails environment name, your app’s database adapter, and schema version. It is useful when you need to ask for help, check if a security patch might affect you, or when you need some stats for an existing Rails installation.

2.2 assets

You can precompile the assets in app/assets using rake assets:precompile and remove those compiled assets using rake assets:clean.

2.3 db

The most common tasks of the db: Rake namespace are migrate and create, and it will pay off to try out all of the migration rake tasks (up, down, redo, reset). rake db:version is useful when troubleshooting, telling you the current version of the database.

More information about migrations can be found in the Migrations guide.

2.4 doc

The doc: namespace has the tools to generate documentation for your app, API documentation, guides. Documentation can also be stripped which is mainly useful for slimming your codebase, like if you’re writing a Rails application for an embedded platform.

rake doc:app generates documentation for your application in doc/app.

rake doc:guides generates Rails guides in doc/guides.

rake doc:rails generates API documentation for Rails in doc/api.

rake doc:plugins generates API documentation for all the plugins installed in the application in doc/plugins.

rake doc:clobber_plugins removes the generated documentation for all plugins.

2.5 notes

rake notes will search through your code for comments beginning with FIXME, OPTIMIZE or TODO. The search is done in files with extension .builder, .rb, .erb, .haml and .slim for both default and custom annotations.

$ rake notes
(in /home/foobar/commandsapp)
app/controllers/admin/users_controller.rb:
* [ 20] [TODO] any other way to do this?
* [132] [FIXME] high priority for next deploy
app/model/school.rb:
* [ 13] [OPTIMIZE] refactor this code to make it faster
* [ 17] [FIXME]

If you are looking for a specific annotation, say FIXME, you can use rake notes:fixme. Note that you have to lower case the annotation’s name.

When using specific annotations and custom annotations, the annotation name (FIXME, BUG etc) is not displayed in the output lines.

2.6 routes

rake routes will list all of your defined routes, which is useful for tracking down routing problems in your app, or giving you a good overview of the URLs in an app you’re trying to get familiar with.

2.7 test

Rails comes with a test suite called Test::Unit. Rails owes its stability to the use of tests. The tasks available in the test: namespace helps in running the different tests you will hopefully write.

2.8 tmp

The Rails.root/tmp directory is, like the *nix /tmp directory, the holding place for temporary files like sessions (if you’re using a file store for files), process id files, and cached actions.

The tmp: namespaced tasks will help you clear the Rails.root/tmp directory:

rake tmp:cache:clear clears tmp/cache.

rake tmp:sessions:clear clears tmp/sessions.

rake tmp:sockets:clear clears tmp/sockets.

rake tmp:clear clears all the three: cache, sessions and sockets.

2.9 Miscellaneous

rake stats is great for looking at statistics on your code, displaying things like KLOCs (thousands of lines of code) and your code to test ratio.

rake secret will give you a pseudo-random key to use for your session secret.

rake time:zones:all lists all the timezones Rails knows about.

3 The Rails Advanced Command Line

More advanced use of the command line is focused around finding useful (even surprising at times) options in the utilities, and fitting those to your needs and specific work flow. Listed here are some tricks up Rails’ sleeve.

3.1 Rails with Databases and SCM

When creating a new Rails application, you have the option to specify what kind of database and what kind of source code management system your application is going to use. This will save you a few minutes, and certainly many keystrokes.

Let’s see what a --git option and a --database=postgresql option will do for us:

It also generated some lines in our database.yml configuration corresponding to our choice of PostgreSQL for database.

The only catch with using the SCM options is that you have to make your application’s directory first, then initialize your SCM, then you can run the rails new command to generate the basis of your app.

3.2 server with Different Backends

Many people have created a large number of different web servers in Ruby, and many of them can be used to run Rails. Since version 2.3, Rails uses Rack to serve its webpages, which means that any webserver that implements a Rack handler can be used. This includes WEBrick, Mongrel, Thin, and Phusion Passenger (to name a few!).

Feedback

You're encouraged to help improve the quality of this guide.

If you see any typos or factual errors you are confident to
patch, please clone the rails
repository and open a new pull request. You can also ask for commit rights on
docrails if you plan to submit
several patches. Commits are reviewed, but that happens after you've submitted your
contribution. This repository is cross-merged with master periodically.

You may also find incomplete content, or stuff that is not up to date.
Please do add any missing documentation for master. Check the
Ruby on Rails Guides Guidelines
for style and conventions.

If for whatever reason you spot something to fix but cannot patch it yourself, please
open an issue.